THE “CHARACTERS”

OF

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

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PUBLISHERʼS NOTE.

Three hundred copies of this book printed for England, and two hundred, with an American imprint, for sale in that country. No more will be printed.

No. 13

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THE “CHARACTERS”

OF

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

NEWLY RENDERED INTO ENGLISH
By HENRI VAN LAUN

With an Introduction, a Biographical Memoir and Notes

ILLUSTRATED WITH TWENTY-FOUR ETCHINGS
By B. DAMMAN and V. FOULQUIER

LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1885

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CONTENTS.

	PAGE
INTRODUCTION	11
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR	26
PREFACE	i
OF WORKS OF THE MIND	7
OF PERSONAL MERIT	39
OF WOMEN	58
OF THE AFFECTIONS	86
OF SOCIETY AND OF CONVERSATION	100
OF THE GIFTS OF FORTUNE	132
OF THE TOWN	164
OF THE COURT	183
OF THE GREAT	221
OF THE SOVEREIGN AND THE STATE	245
OF MANKIND	271
OF OPINIONS	328
OF FASHION	377
OF CERTAIN CUSTOMS	403
OF THE PULPIT	442
OF FREETHINKERS	459

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LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS.

Etchings—Portraits.

	PAGE
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE	Frontispiece
MONTAIGNE	23
DESCARTES	151
LE BRUN	236
LOUIS XIV.	270
WILLIAM III.	374
BOSSUET	453

Etchings—Vignettes.

	PAGE
THE AUTHOR	i
STUDY	7
TIRED OUT	39
THE TOILETTE	58
AFFECTION	86
SOCIETY	100
RUSTIC COURTSHIP	132
THE TUILERIES	164
THE COURT	183
THE GREAT	221
10THE PRICE OF GLORY	245
THE CONSULTATION	271
DIFFERENT OPINIONS	328
THE BIRD-FANCIER	377
NOBLE AND CITIZEN	403
MONK PREACHING	442
BELIEF	459

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INTRODUCTION.

T is a common practice for translators to state to the public that the author they are going to introduce, and whom they sometimes traduce, is one of the greatest men of the age, and that already for a long time a general desire has been felt to make the acquaintance of such a master-mind. It would be an insult to French scholars to speak thus of La Bruyère, for the merits of his “Characters” are known; but, for the benefit of those who are not so well acquainted with our author, I may state that he is neither so terse, epigrammatic, sublime, nor profound as either Pascal or La Rochefoucauld are, but that he is infinitely more readable, as he is always trying to please his readers, and now and then sacrifices even a certain depth of thought to attain his object.

La Bruyère takes good care to tell us that he has not imitated any one; Pascal “makes metaphysics subservient to religion, explains the nature of the soul, its passions and vices; treats of the great and serious motives which lead to virtue, and endeavours to make a man a Christian;” La Rochefoucauldʼs “mind, instructed by his knowledge of society, and with a delicacy equal to his penetration, observed that self-love in man was the cause of all his errors, and attacked it without intermission, wherever it was found; and this one thought, multiplied as it were in a thousand different ways by a choice of words and a variety of expression, has always the charm of novelty.”1 Our author, on the contrary, openly declares: “I did not wish to write any maxims, for they are like moral laws, and I acknowledge that I possess neither sufficient authority nor genius for a legislator.”2

What is the plan and idea of the book of “Characters?” Let La Bruyère himself answer this: “Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind; therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of freethinkers.”3

La Bruyère is not a speculative moralist, but an observer of the manners of men, or, as he likes to call himself a philosopher, and above all a Christian philosopher, such as a friend of Bossuet ought to be. He was the first to make morality attractive, and to paint characters in a literary and delicate manner; he does not dogmatise, and above all shows neither personal hatred nor venom; in other words, to use his own expressions, he “gives back to the public what it lent”4 him.

Underneath the literary man people often look for the man, with all his passion, his likes and dislikes; hence the many “Keys” of the “Characters,” published during the authorʼs lifetime and after his death, in which all kinds of allusions were attempted, and all sorts of hypothetical explanations ventured on.

Of the concocters of the “Keys” La Bruyère speaks as follows:

“They make it their business, if possible, to discover to which of their friends or enemies these portraits can apply; they neglect everything that seems like a sound remark or a serious reflection, though almost the whole book consists of them; they dwell upon nothing but the portraits or characters, and after having explained them in their own way, and after they imagine they have found out the originals, they publish to the world long lists, or, as they call them, ‘Keys,’ but which are indeed ‘false keys,’ and as useless to them as they are injurious to the persons whose names are deciphered, and to the writer who is the cause of it, though an involuntary one.”5

And yet some of these “Keys” have been of great use to modern commentators, and served to elucidate several traits in the “Characters” which otherwise would not have been discovered.

It would be ridiculous to deny that La Bruyère never had any particular personage in view in delineating a certain character, but, as he himself says: “If I might be allowed to be a little vain, I should be apt to believe that my “Characters” have pretty well portrayed men in general, since they resemble so many in particular; and since every one thinks he finds there his neighbour or his countryman. I did indeed paint after the life, but did not always mean to paint, in my book of “Characters,” one individual or another. I did not hire myself out to the public to draw only such portraits as should be true and like the originals, for fear that sometimes they would be thought incredible, and appear feigned or imaginary ones. Becoming yet more difficult I went farther, and took one lineament from one person and one from another, and from these several lineaments, which might be found in one and the same person, I drew some likely portraits, studying not so much to please the reader by describing the characters of certain people, or, as the malcontents would say, by satirising them, as to lay before him what faults he ought to avoid, and what examples to follow.”6

Our author, therefore, did not wish to depict individuals, but men in general; for man is the same in all seasons and at all times, and is swayed by the same motives and passions, though they exercise a different influence in various ages, produce different results amongst many races, and do not even act in precisely the same manner in divers centuries, climates, and under heterogeneous circumstances. He had no intention of presenting a series of historical events,7 but of depicting Frenchmen at the end of the seventeenth century as they lived, breathed, and moved; not animated by violent likes and dislikes, as those of the Ligue or the Fronde were, nor filled by the importance of their own overweening individualities. When we read him, we behold in our mindʼs eye the subdued subjects of Louis XIV., slavishly obeying the “Roi Soleil,” admitting the King can do no wrong, becoming devout to please His Majesty and Madame de Maintenon, inaugurating the reign of courtly hypocrisy, embracing the principle of one religion in one state, and seeing the royal sun gradually decline, and the star of William III. in its ascendancy.

The notes of the present edition are necessary, I imagine, to assist in illustrating the life of a past age, for “no usages or customs are perennial, but they vary with the times.... Nothing can be more opposed to our manners than all these things; but the distance of time makes us relish them.” The “Characters” themselves, as well as the notes, represent a “history of ... times,” when the usual custom was “the selling of offices; that is to say, the power of protecting innocence, punishing guilt, and doing justice to the world, bought with ready money like a farm.” They will also make my readers acquainted with “a great city,” which at the end of the seventeenth century was “without any public places, baths, fountains, amphitheatres, galleries, porticoes, or public walks, and this the capital of a powerful kingdom; they will be told of persons whose whole life was spent in going from one house to another; of decent women who kept neither shops nor inns, yet had their houses open for those who would pay for their admission,8 and where they could choose between dice, cards, and other games, where feasting was going on, and which were very convenient for all kinds of intercourse. They will be informed that people crowded the street only to be thought in a hurry; that there was no conversation nor cordiality, but that they were confused, and, as it were, alarmed by the rattle of coaches which they had to avoid, and which drove through the streets as if for a prize at some race. People will learn, without being greatly astonished, that in times of public peace and tranquillity, the inhabitants went to church and visited ladies and their friends, whilst wearing offensive weapons; and that there was hardly any one who did not have dangling at his side wherewith to kill another person with one thrust.”9

La Bruyère, though a shrewd observer, has the daring of an innovator, but always remains very guarded in his language. When now and then his feelings get the better of him, he expresses his opinions like a man, and attacks the vices of his age with a boldness which none of his contemporaries has surpassed. Nearly the whole of his chapter “Of the Gifts of Fortune” is an attack on the financiers; in the chapter “Of the Great,” he certainly does not flatter the courtiers, whilst he himself never pretends to be anything else but “a plebeian,”10 and almost always sides with his own class. If he flatters the king, it is because he thinks him necessary to the state, and, perhaps, also because he wishes to have a defender against the many enemies his book had raised up. He was, moreover, very cautious, and in the endless alterations he made in the various editions of the “Characters,”11 published during his lifetime, he but seldom envenomed the barb he had shot, or boasted of it if he did so.12 Though he touched on all the passions of men, he did not set one class against another, a task which was left to the so-called philosophical authors of the eighteenth century.

The style of La Bruyère has been praised by competent judges for its conciseness and picturesqueness; he always employs the right word in the right place, is correct in his expressions, varied in his thoughts, highly imaginative, and, therefore, maybe called a perfect literary artist.13 A few words and expressions, which I have noticed, have become antiquated, or have changed their meaning, but the “Characters” will still, I think, be read for many ages, be found very entertaining, and, what cannot be said of the works of every classical French author, will be better liked the more they are read. If sometimes one of the characters is portrayed with too many details, it is because it is taken not from one man, but composed of a series of shrewd and clever observations made on different personages; and hence our author calls them “Characters,” and not “portraits.”

Since La Bruyèreʼs death many editions of the “Characters” have appeared; I have collated and compared the best of them, amongst which those edited by Mons. G. Servois and Mons. A. Chassang have laid me under great obligations. I am indebted to these two editions for many of the notes, and for a few to those of MM. Destailleur and Hémardinquer.

Several imitations of the “Characters” have also been published, amongst others a Petit la Bruyère, ou Caractères et mœurs des enfants de ce siècle, and a Le la Bruyère des domestiques, précédé de considérations sur Pétat de domesticité en général, both by that voluminous author, Madame de Genlis, a Le la Bruyère des jeunes gens, and a similar work for jeunes demoiselles, which attract the attention by the oddity of their titles.

La Bruyèreʼs “Characters” have also been translated several times into English.

1. A translation seems to have been published in London as early as 1698.14

2. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from M. Bruyèreʼs French version by Eustace Budgell, Esq., London, 1699; and another edition of the same work published in 1702.15

3. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” together with the Characters of the Age, by La Bruyère, with a prefatory discourse and key: London, 1700.16

4. The “Characters, or the Manners of the Age,” by Monsieur de la Bruyère of the French Academy, made English by several hands, with the “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from the Greek, and a prefatory discourse to them, by Monsieur de la Bruyère, the third edition, corrected throughout, and enlarged, with the Key inserted in the margin: London, Leach, 1702.

5. The Works of Monsieur de la Bruyère, containing: I. The Moral Characters of Theophrastus; II. The Characters, or the Manners of the Present Age; III. M. Bruyèreʼs Speech upon his Admission into the French Academy; IV. An Account of the Life and Writings of M. Bruyère, by Monsieur Coste, with an original Chapter of the Manner of Living with Great Men, written after the method of M. Bruyère, by N. Rowe, Esq. This translation seems to have been very successful, for the sixth edition, the only one I have seen, was published in two volumes in 1713: London, E. Curll.

6. The Moral Characters of Theophrastus, by H. Gaily: London, 1725.

7. The Works of M. de la Bruyère, in two volumes, to which is added the Characters of Theophrastus, also The Manner of Living with Great Men, written after the manner of Bruyère, by N. Rowe, Esq.: London, J. Bell, 1776.

I have consulted the edition mentioned in No. 2, and printed in 1702, in which the attacks of La Bruyère on William III. in the Chapter “Of Opinions,” §§ 118 and 119, are omitted; the sixth edition of the “Characters,” given in No. 5, and published in 1713; and the edition referred to in No. 7.

In the “Advertisement concerning the new edition” of 1713, printed with the “Characters,” it is stated, “We procured the last English edition to be compared verbatim with the last Paris edition (which is the ninth), and ... all the Supplemental Reflections ... we got translated, and added to this present edition; and that it might be as complete as possible, we have not scrupled to translate even those parts which at first sight may perhaps disoblige some who have a just veneration for the memory of our Glorious Deliverer, the late King William.” La Bruyèreʼs speech upon his admission into the French Academy was in this edition “made English by M. Ozell.”

In the edition of 1776, the “parts” reflecting on William III. are again omitted. It greatly differs from the one of 1713, and is dedicated to the Right Honourable Henry, Earl of Lincoln, Auditor of the Exchequer, Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c. &c.

Many faults may be found in the old translations, but I have endeavoured to amend them; and I never scrupled to adopt any expressions, turn of thought, or even page of any or every translation of my predecessors, whenever I found I could not improve upon them.

Translations of the “Characters” have appeared in several other languages; four of these were published in German, the last one printed in 1872, whilst already the final chapter of La Bruyèreʼs book “Of Freethinkers” had come out in a German dress in 1739; moreover, La Bruyèreʼs book has been translated twice into Italian, once into Spanish, and once into Russian.

The imitations of the “Characters” into English are—

1. “The English Theophrastus, or the Manners of the Age, being the modern Characters of the Court, the Town, and the City,” by Boyer: London, 1692 and 1702.

2. The Chapter “Of the Manner of Living with Great Men,” written after the method of M. Bruyère, by N. Rowe, mentioned already.

3. Imitations of the Characters of Theophrastus: London, 1774.

I imagine that the author of the “English Theophrastus” was M. Abel Boyer, the compiler of the well-known dictionary, born at Castres in 1664, who fled to England at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and died at Chelsea in 1729.

The direct influence of La Bruyèreʼs writings on English literature is not easily to be traced. Swift may, possibly, have studied him, though he never mentions him,17 and so may, perhaps, Anthony Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury,18 “who spoke French so fluently, and with so perfect an accent, that in France he was often mistaken for a native.”19 I venture to think that Addison and Steele were also acquainted with our Frenchman;20 but the English author who in expression, turn of thought, art of delineating character, and in his mixture of seriousness and familiarity, is most like him, is a doctor of divinity, R. South, Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ Church, and yet he wrote before La Bruyère, and therefore cannot have imitated him.21

I am not aware La Bruyère knew English, though his successor at the French Academy states that he spoke several foreign languages;22 he was well acquainted with German, Italian, and I think also Spanish; nor do I know if any of Dr. Southʼs sermons were published separately before La Bruyère wrote, and if he, therefore, could have seen them. I should imagine he never read any of them.

Six portraits, which adorn these volumes, have been specially etched for this edition by M. B. Damman, whilst the portrait of La Bruyère, and the vignettes at the head of each chapter, have been drawn and etched by M. V. Foulquier.

In the biographical memoir of La Bruyère, I have only stated what is known of him, which is very little.

HENRI VAN LAUN.

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A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

OF

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE.

OR a long time it has generally been taken for granted that our author first saw the light at Dourdan, a small town in the department of Seine-et-Oise, but it has only lately been discovered that he was born in Paris in the month of August 1645. His father, Louis de la Bruyère, was contrôleur des rentes de la ville, a sort of town-tax collector, whilst his mother, Elizabeth Hamonin, belonged to a respectable family of Parisian burgesses. His grandfather and great-grandfather on the fatherʼs side, declared partisans of the Ligue, were both exiled from France when Henri IV. came to the throne. Perhaps, therefore, the feelings our author entertained for the people may be explained by atavism. A younger brother of his father and our authorʼs godfather, a very wealthy man, and most likely a money-lender, as well as interested in the farming of certain taxes, seems to have produced no favourable impression on his god-son, for the latter always attacks the farmers of the revenue.

Jean de la Bruyère was educated at the Oratorians in Paris, and two years before his father died, in the month of June 1664, took his degree of licentiate at law at the University of Orléans. He became an advocate, but in 1673, when twenty-eight years old, he forsook the bar, and bought for about 24,000 livres the post of trésorier des finances in the Caen district, in Normandy. There were fifteen trésoriers at Caen, of whom only some were obliged to reside there, but all became ennobled by virtue of their office, and received as non-residents a yearly salary of about 2500 livres. La Bruyère had bought this treasurership of a certain Joseph Metezeau, said to have been a relative by marriage of Bossuet, but this is not at all proved; and in 1686, about two years before he was going to publish the “Characters,” and when already he had been for some time one of the teachers of the Duke de Bourbon, a grandson of the Prince Louis de Condé, he sold again his post for 18,000 livres to Charles-François de la Bonde, Seigneur dʼIberville.

On the recommendation of Bossuet, La Bruyère, in 1684, had been appointed teacher of history to the Duke de Bourbon; and remained with the Condés for twelve years, until the day of his death. He instructed his pupil not only in history, but also in geography, literature, and philosophy; yet his lessons appear to have produced no great impression, and moreover, they did not last very long, for the youthful duke married in 1685 a daughter of Madame de Montespan and Louis XIV.,23 and La Bruyère received then the appointment of écuyer gentilhomme to Henri Jules, Duke of Bourbon, the father of his former pupil.

Why La Bruyère ever accepted the post of teacher, and afterwards of “gentleman in waiting,” cannot be elucidated at the present time; he may have suffered reverses of fortune, which compelled him to gain a livelihood, but in any case he made the best use of his residence with a noble family, by studying the personages whose vices and ridicules he so admirably portrayed. Living with the Condés at their hotel at Paris, at their country seats at Chantilly and Saint Maur, or when they were visiting the Court, at Versailles, Marly, Fontainebleau, or Chambord, amidst the noble and high-born of the land, without being considered one of them, he had the best opportunity of penetrating the characters of those men who strutted about in gaudy trappings, and lorded it over the common herd, whilst soliciting offices or dignities; and for observing that these men were neither superior in feelings nor intellect to the “common people.”24

All his reflections and observations he arranged under a certain number of headings, called the whole of them “Characters,” and read some passages to a few of his friends, who seem not to have been greatly smitten by them. But this did not discourage La Bruyère; he translated into French the “Characters” of Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher of the peripatetic school, the successor of Aristotle as the head of the Academy, who seems to have lived until about the year 285 B.C., wrote a prefatory discourse to them, in which he displayed more satirical power than in any of his other works,25 and resolved to publish his translation, and to print as a kind of appendix his own “Characters” at the end of it. One day,26 whilst La Bruyère was sitting in the shop of a certain bookseller, named Michallet, which he visited almost daily, and was playing with the shopkeeperʼs little daughter, he took the manuscript of the “Characters” out of his pocket, and told Michallet he might print it if he liked, and keep the profits, if there were any, as a dowry for his child. The bookseller hesitated for some time, but finally published it, and the sale of it was so large that he brought out one edition after another as quick as he could.

It is certain that the publication of the “Characters” in 1688 made its author many enemies, but he calmly pursued the even tenor of his way, and increased the number of his paragraphs during the remaining portion of his life.27

In 1691 he endeavoured to be elected a member of the French Academy, and to become the successor of Benserade,28 but failed, thanks to the number of his enemies, amongst whom probably Fontenelle and Thomas Corneille, the nephew and brother of the great poet Pierre Corneille, were the most active; yet in 1693 he was elected without having made the usual visits to the Academicians to solicit their votes,29 though his friends, Racine, Boileau, the secretary of state, de Pontchartrain,30 and others, used all their influence to ensure his nomination.

The speech he delivered at his reception seems not to have given general satisfaction, for La Bruyère defended the partisans of the classical and attacked those of the modern school, proclaimed Boileau a judicious critic, and hardly admitted Corneille to be the equal of Racine. This speech, preceded by a very satirical preface,31 in which he ridiculed his enemies under the name of “Theobalds,” was published with the eighth edition of the “Characters.”

But if he had bitter enemies he had also warm friends, amongst whom, besides the illustrious men I have already named, must be reckoned: Phélypeaux, the son of de Pontchartrain; the Marquis de Termes; Bossuet, and his nephew the Abbé Bossuet; Fénelon; de Malesieu; Renaudot; de Valincourt; Regnier-Desmarais; La Loubère, and Bouhier, nearly all present or future members of the French Academy; the poet Santeuil, and the historian Caton de Court.

We hardly know anything for certain of the character of La Bruyère except by the glimpses we get now and then in his book, or by what is told of him in some of the letters and writings of his friends and enemies. He was unmarried, and seems to have been a man of a modest disposition, fond of his books and his friends, polite in his manners, and willing to oblige. I imagine he must have felt it sometimes hard to be dependent on so fantastic, suspicious, half-demented a man as was the father of his former pupil, above all, after the death of the great Condé, which took place on the 8th of December 1686,32 and also to have disliked being made now and then the butt of courtiers33 his mental inferiors, but aristocratic superiors; hence he was often silent for fear of being laughed at.34

He was scarcely fifty when, according to some reports, he became suddenly deaf; a few days afterwards, during the night of the 10th of May 1696, he died of an attack of apoplexy at the hotel of the Condés at Versailles.

In 1699 were published some Dialogues sur le Quiétisme, attributed to La Bruyère; but as the editor, the Abbé du Pin, admitted he had partly altered them, as well as added some of his own, it is difficult to judge what was the original share of our author in their composition.

Only twenty-one authenticated letters of La Bruyère are in existence, of which seventeen are in the collection of the Duke dʼAumale, at Twickenham.

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PREFACE.

“Admonere voluimus, non mordere; prodesse, non lædere;
consulere moribus hominum, non officere.”35

THE subject-matter of this work being borrowed from the public, I now give back to it what it lent me; it is but right that having finished the whole work throughout with the utmost regard to truth I am capable of, and which it deserves from me, I should make restitution of it. The world may view at leisure its picture drawn from life, and may correct any of the faults I have touched upon, if conscious of them. This is the only goal a man ought to propose to himself in writing, though he must not in the least expect to be successful; however, as long as men are not disgusted with vice we should also never tire of admonishing them; they would perhaps grow worse were it not for censure or reproof, and hence the need of preaching and writing. Neither orators nor authors can conceal the joy they feel on being applauded, whereas they ought to blush if they aim at nothing more than praise in their speeches or writings; besides, the surest and least doubtful approbation is a change and regeneration in the morals of their readers and hearers. We should neither write nor speak but to instruct; yet, if we happen to please, we should not be sorry for it, since by those means we render those instructive truths more palatable and acceptable. When, therefore, any thoughts or reflections have slipped into a book which are neither so spirited, well written, nor vivid as others, though they seem to have been inserted for the sake of variety, as a relaxation to the mind, or to draw its attention to what is to follow, the reader should reject and the author delete them, unless they are attractive, familiar, instructive, and adapted to the capacity of ordinary people, whom we must by no means neglect.

This is one way of settling things; there is another which my own interest trusts may be adopted; and that is, not to lose sight of my title, and always to bear in mind, as often as this book is read, that I describe “The Characters or Manners of the Age;” for though I frequently take them from the court of France and from men of my own nation, yet they cannot be confined to any one court or country, without greatly impairing the compass and utility of my book, and departing from the design of the work, which is to paint mankind in general, as well as from the reasons for the order of my chapters, and even from a certain gradual connection between the reflections in each of those chapters. After this so necessary precaution, the consequences of which are obvious enough, I think I may protest against all resentment, complaint, malicious interpretation, false application and censure, against insipid railers and cantankerous readers. People ought to know how to read and then hold their tongues, unless able to relate what they have read, and neither more nor less than what they have read, which they sometimes can do; but this is not sufficient—they must also be willing to do it. Without these conditions, which a careful and scrupulous author has a right to demand from some people, as the sole reward of his labour, I question whether he ought to continue writing, if at least he prefers his private satisfaction to the public good and to his zeal for truth. I confess, moreover, that since the year MDCLXXXX, and before publishing the fifth edition, I was divided between an impatience to cast my book into a fuller and better shape by adding new Characters, and a fear lest some people should say: “Will there never be an end to these Characters, and shall we never see anything else from this author?” On the one hand several persons of sound common-sense told me: “The subject-matter is solid, useful, pleasant, inexhaustible; may you live for a long time, and treat it without interruption as long as you live! what can you do better? The follies of mankind will ensure you a volume every year.” Others, again, with a good deal of reason, made me dread the fickleness of the multitude and the instability of the public, with whom, however, I have good cause to be satisfied; they were always suggesting to me that for the last thirty years, few persons read except for the pleasure of reading, and not to improve themselves, and that, to amuse mankind, fresh chapters and a new title were needed; that this sluggishness had filled the shops and crowded the world with dull and tedious books, written in a bad style and without any intelligence, order, or the least correctness, against all morality or decency, written in a hurry, and read in the same way, and then only for the sake of novelty; and that if I could do nothing else but enlarge a sensible book, it would be much better for me to take a rest. I adopted something of both those advices, though they were at variance with one another, and observed an impartiality which clashed with neither. I did not hesitate to add some fresh remarks to those which already had doubled the bulk of the first edition of my book;36 but, in order not to oblige the public to read again what had been printed before, to get at new material, and to let them immediately find out what they only desired to read, I took care to distinguish those second additions by a peculiar mark ((¶));37 I also thought it would not be useless to distinguish the first augmentations by another and simpler mark (¶), to show the progress of my “Characters,” as well as to guide the reader in the choice he might be willing to make. And lest he be afraid I should never have done with those additions, I added to all this care a sincere promise to venture on nothing more of the kind. If any one accuses me of breaking my word, because I inserted in the three last editions38 a goodly number of new remarks, he may perceive at least that by adding new ones to old, and by completely suppressing those differences pointed out in the margin, I did not so much endeavour to entertain the world with novelties, as perhaps to leave to posterity a book of morals more complete, more finished, and more regular. To conclude, I did not wish to write any maxims, for they are like moral laws, and I acknowledge that I possess neither sufficient authority nor genius for a legislator. I also know I have transgressed the ordinary standard of maxims, which, like oracles, should be short and concise.39 Some of my remarks are so, others are more diffuse; we do not always think of things in the same way, and we describe them in as different a manner by a sentence, an argument, a metaphor, or some other figure; by a parallel or a simple comparison; by a story, by a single feature, by a description, or a picture; which is the cause of the length or brevity of my reflections. Finally, those who write maxims would be thought infallible; I, on the contrary, allow any one to say that my remarks are not always correct, provided he himself will make better ones.

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